Economic Impact of the Nation’s Precision Timing Infrastructure: The Global Positioning System

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NIST invites applications from eligible applicants to assess the economic impact of the Nation’s Space-based positioning, navigation and timing (PNT). Specifically, the awardee, in collaboration with NIST, will identify key technologies developed by and transferred from federal laboratories that support GPS, estimate the qualitative and quantitative economic impact of these investments, and sponsor certain focused graduate and post-doctoral research. The applicant will conduct a retrospective analysis to estimate national benefits that have been realized by GPS and not project future benefits of GPS. The goals of this study are to: (1) identify and analyze the federal research and technology transfer activities and outputs that significantly impacted research, development, adoption and deployment of space-based GPS and the associated technology infrastructure related to applications with critical need for precision timing; (2) conduct a detailed analysis of the impacts of the use of GPS and precise time measurements across an array of applications, industries and throughout supply chains; (3) conduct a qualitative assessment of these impacts of GPS, precision timing and the associated technology infrastructure; (4) conduct a quantitative empirical assessment of the national economic impact of GPS, precision timing and the associated technology infrastructure; (5) draw upon its qualitative and quantitative analyses of federal R&D and technology transfer activities to identify lessons relevant to future GPS and timing investments; and (6) sponsor graduate and post-doctoral research thereby contributing to the development of the next generation of researchers focused on science, R&D and technology transfer impact analysis.

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